


The Way You Didn't Go

by aeli_kindara



Series: Supernatural Codas [18]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode Tag, Episode: s15e09 The Trap, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Mark of Cain (Supernatural), Season/Series 15
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:54:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22317412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeli_kindara/pseuds/aeli_kindara
Summary: “It’ll be me,” says Cas. “Who takes the Mark.”Dean pauses, hands gory with Leviathan Blossom. He sets down his knife, keeps his voice neutral. “Why?”
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester
Series: Supernatural Codas [18]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/877383
Comments: 166
Kudos: 931





	The Way You Didn't Go

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [Wendell Berry](https://cals.arizona.edu/~steidl/Liberation.html).

#### (1.)

“It’ll be me,” says Cas. “Who takes the Mark.”

Dean pauses, hands gory with Leviathan Blossom. He sets down his knife, keeps his voice neutral. “Why?”

Cas is looking at him with his eyebrows knit together, that sympathetic upside-down V that always makes Dean feel like he’s been X-rayed, like his insides are right there on display. “A myriad of reasons. For one, based on my understandings of the metaphysics of such curses — I don’t believe you’ll be _able_ to serve as the lock a second time. For another —”

It shouldn’t be relief. The thing that sweeps Dean — it shouldn’t be gratitude.

But he can still see Cas’s face, bloody and battered. Can still feel the crunch of Cas’s bone under his fists. 

_I don’t know why I get so angry — I just know that it’s always been there. And when things go bad — it comes out. And I can’t stop it._

“I don’t trust myself with it.” Dean’s voice comes out low; it takes him a moment to realize he’s speaking at all. “Not — not the way I trust you.”

Cas looks at him for another moment. Nods.

And then it’s done — faster than he’s ready for. The trap set, the orb of the spell smooth and heavy in the pocket of Cas’s coat.

#### (2.)

“I want to ask you for something,” Cas says, halfway through the drive to Nebraska. “When we get back — I want you to make another Ma’lak Box.”

“Cas,” says Dean. “No.”

“Yes.” Cas’s hands are light on the radio dial, long fingers, clean-cut nails. Dean watches them; can’t help himself. Cas flips through static, pauses on a country station, then comes to rest on a hazy Zeppelin chord. They crest a rise, and the signal clears. “Please, Dean. You know why I’m asking.”

Dean swallows. _At last the arm is straight, the hand to the loom,_ Robert Plant sings. _Is this to end or just begin?_

He knows why Cas is asking.

“All right,” he says. The radio croons in agreement. They drive on unspeaking, on into the night.

#### (3.)

Sam has his chance — the spell in his hand.

He falls. Drops to his knees. It rolls, unbroken, to rest against Chuck’s shoe.

_Thank God,_ Dean can’t stop thinking, the whole drive home. _Thank God,_ though he knows he shouldn’t, though he knows God has nothing to do with any thanks he has to give.

#### (4.)

Eileen’s haunted. Dean can see it; the way she flinches away from herself. The looks she keeps giving Sam, like she’s still checking, always checking, that he’s okay — that the visions haunting her aren’t coming back to life. The way she clasps her hands, white-knuckled, in her lap.

When they get home, she disappears to her room. It doesn’t surprise Dean that she comes out with a packed bag.

_Stop her,_ he wants to tell Sam. _Beg her to stay._ But Eileen isn’t Cas, and Sam isn’t Dean.

He keeps his mouth shut.

Cas drifts into the kitchen after him, a trenchcoat-clad shadow. He shakes his head when Dean holds out the whiskey bottle in question, so Dean shrugs and pours himself a glass.

He slides onto his customary stool. Cas, after a moment’s awkward hesitation, swings his own around so he’s sitting at Dean’s elbow. Close enough Dean could count the stubble on his cheek.

Dean takes a drink. Cas looks down at his folded hands. “I’m relieved,” he confesses quietly. “I’m ashamed of it, but I’m relieved.”

His wristbones are sharp where they stick out from the trenchcoat’s cuffs. Dean looks at them and tries to picture the Mark on Cas’s forearm. Tries to picture Cas’s forearm — it’s rare that he goes around with his shirt sleeves rolled up.

It seems suddenly important, that Dean know the shape of Cas’s arms. The tone of his skin.

He takes another swallow of whiskey. “Me too. Even though —”

Even though it means they’re back at square one. They’re back at square one together, and compared to the last few months of misery, it doesn’t feel like square one at all.

\---

“What Chuck showed me,” says Sam, “what would happen if we trapped him — I believed him. I still do.”

He expects Dean to be furious.

Dean can see the part of himself that would be. The part of him that snarled: _If we can't open the door, then I should've never come back!_ Or: _You’re dead to me._ Or: _Get in the damn car!_

There’s even a flash of it, under his ribs, icy cold and edged with fire.

It feels faraway, though. Unimportant. Dean’s telling the truth when he says, “Well, that’s good enough for me.”

\---

Cas gives them space to talk about it, just the two of them, that night.

Sam lays out the whole story. The rising tide of monsters; their friends dying, one by one. Claire, first; then Donna, Alex, Patience. Garth. Eileen.

His own helpless drive to hunt. The day that Dean gave up, and the day they lost. The day they died, at long last, cut down by their sole surviving friends.

It takes less than three years, all told. It starts with a Mark of Cain. And a Ma’lak Box.

“I think that’s what convinced me,” says Sam in the end, voice low. “A big part of it, anyway — watching you go through that. I couldn’t —”

He stops. Ducks his head, presses a thumb to the corner of his mouth.

_Watching me go through it?_ Dean says, “I thought Cas was the one with the Mark.”

Sam glances up at him, startled. “Yeah. I mean — you _buried_ him, Dean.”

Dean feels suddenly sick.

He didn’t think it would happen. Not really; not in his lifetime. Cas is too strong — too good. He wouldn’t yield to the Mark like Dean did.

“And I think,” says Sam, “about watching Eileen hurt me, what that did to her —”

He stops short. His throat makes an involuntary sound.

“I couldn’t do that to you.” His voice is clumsy, wet. “I — can’t. I’m sorry.”

Dean goes very still.

Comparing Cas to Eileen is one thing when Dean does it. It’s another when Sam — does he think they’re —

Sam yawns, wide and involuntary. His head is drooping from his shoulders.

“Get some rest,” Dean tells him. He forces a smile, a clap on the back. “You need it. Hell, I need it.”

Sam yawns twice more before he shuffles himself off to bed.

#### (5.)

But Dean can’t rest.

His head’s too full. Of everything he’s learned — he lies in the dark, turning and turning it over in his mind.

Cas was going to succumb.

Did he know?

He asked Dean about the Ma’lak Box. A precaution, Dean figured. Insurance. Just in case. But maybe Cas didn’t think it was just in case. And yet he was still ready — to take the Mark, to lose himself to it.

What the hell is Dean supposed to feel about that? Grateful that Cas would take that on? Furious at being left behind?

He grits his teeth and clenches his hand until his fingers start to go numb.

How would it have happened? It’s hard to imagine. Cas is too steady, too smart, to let himself be provoked to darkness. He’s had his missteps, sure, but he always believed he was doing the right thing. Even when he opened Purgatory — he believed he was doing the right thing.

There was the attack dog spell, but that was different. The Mark doesn’t drive you mindless; it takes your mind and twists it, makes you want things like you never did before.

_If he lost Claire —_

The thought brings Dean up short.

Cas still makes his monthly trips to Sioux Falls with a sincere, awkward intensity; negotiates weekends with Jody. He thinks of Claire as his responsibility. His child, Dean guesses, and in a way she is.

It’s different, losing a child.

He thinks of Cas’s grief at Jack’s death. Grief that Dean ignored, dismissed, in his rush to make use of Belphegor.

_Dean, I can’t. I can’t even look at him._

If Claire was dead and Cas was juiced up on the Mark of Cain —

Dean remembers his rampage after Charlie’s death. Hell, he remembers what he did to those men that would have hurt Claire. Coming back to himself, kneeling in blood, bodies all around him on the floor.

Yeah, that would do it.

If he’d had the Mark when Mom died —

He turns his face into the pillow, clenching his eyes tight. He doesn’t want to think about that.

That’s what must have happened with Cas. Would have happened with Cas. Losing someone he couldn’t stand to lose.

_What about me?_ demands a helpless, childlike wail that starts deep in Dean’s chest and barely stops short of his throat. _Burying him alive — doesn’t he know he’s someone_ I _can’t stand to lose?_

How bad would it have gotten, before Dean agreed to do it?

Would he have had to trick Cas into the box — force him into the box? No; he’d refuse. Cas wouldn’t let it get to that point anyway. He’d shut himself up long before forcing that choice on Dean.

But Dean would argue with him. Persuade him to keep trying. Maybe for too long.

If it came down to it — if Cas were violent, uncontrollable — could Dean do it?

No. He’d refuse. He’d let Cas beat him to death first; not like it would fucking matter —

No. That would be the worst thing he could do to Cas. Worse than locking him up for all eternity. Worse than living without him.

Dean tosses and turns. The sheets are a sweaty twist around him long before he finally drops off to sleep.

#### (6.)

He’s running through the bunker hallways, acid fear burning in his throat.

What’s after him is an avenging angel — no. It’s a demon — no. It’s something of both, fire and fury and a blade already dark with Sam’s blood.

_No, that’s not how it went — Sam didn’t die —_

He spins around a corner, and he’s at a dead end. Locked door, no key. That’s no problem, he can kick it down. He tries once, twice —

But his limbs are weak. Useless. He spins, back to the wood, as the _thing_ comes into view.

It’s Cas. Only it’s Cas with a terrible blue flame in place of his eyes. Cas with his angel blade naked in his hand.

“Cas,” says Dean, and hears his voice break. “Cas, please —”

Cas raises his knife — an overhand blow. It descends —

\---

Cas, chained at the center of a pentagram, a ring of holy oil burning at his feet. The Ma’lak Box stands behind him. Lid open like it’s hungry.

“If you’re doing it you need to — _do_ it,” Cas snarls. He’s breathing hard, and when he looks at Dean, that’s pure hate in his eyes. “Pretty soon you won’t be able to stop me.”

“Cas.” Sam’s voice is raspy. “Are you sure you want —”

“No, I’m not sure,” snaps Cas. “Which is why you’d better do it now, before I’m sure I don’t —”

Dean can’t speak. His throat is made of lead.

\---

They’re in the hallway. “I can,” says Sam. “If you want — I won’t tell you ‘til after it’s done —”

For just one blinding moment, Dean hates him.

He clenches his teeth. He doesn’t lash out. “I need to do this,” he says. “Alone.”

\---

Cas climbing stiffly, straight-backed, into the box.

He’s unrestrained. Mouth set, eyes a furious blue. It’s his bitchface, Dean thinks, the one he’s so helplessly fond of — only different. Cruel.

Cas situates himself in the box. There’s plenty of padding for comfort — Dean made sure of that. Tested it out himself. Cas lies back like a corpse, crossing his arms over his chest.

“You want me to fuck you,” he tells Dean, conversationally, as if he’s mentioning that the sky is blue.

Dean jolts, nearly trips — has to catch himself on the box’s stand. The whole thing rocks precariously, then steadies. His tongue is glue, his heart is racing. Cas looks up at him without a trace of amusement in his frigid eyes.

“You have for a while. You wanted to tell me in Purgatory — but, well.”

His deepest, stupidest secret, and Cas knew all along. Cas knew, and gave no sign, because Cas doesn’t want —

“This me probably would. Give it a week or two. Can’t promise I’d be nice about it, but —”

It — Cas — smiles thinly. The first smile Dean’s seen on his face in weeks.

“Nice is wasted on boys like you. Isn’t it?”

And Cas isn’t Cas. He’s Alastair — he’s that hotel manager in Reston, Virginia — he’s John Winchester, disapproving; he’s Mary, indifference clouding her gaze —

\---

_It’s a nightmare._ It’s a nightmare. Dean claws to the knowledge gasping; it didn’t happen, and it wouldn’t, not like that — Cas wouldn’t —

\---

“Please, Dean.” Cas in the Ma’lak Box, arms crossed over his chest. His eyes are understanding; his eyes are sad. “Do it now. This way I won’t have to watch you fail.”

\---

He’s lying in bed. Staring up at the darkened ceiling. The alarm clock on the nightstand reads 2am.

There’s grave dirt on his hands.

Under his fingernails. In the creases of his palms. He could scrub and scrub and he’d never get it off, because it’s _Cas,_ Cas that he buried in an unmarked grave — so he won’t be tempted to go and dig him out again.

_I’m sorry,_ he remembers saying, with every shovelful. _I’m sorry, Cas, I’m so sorry —_

And Cas: _I forgive you. I love you._ Until his voice is muffled to nothing under the fresh turned earth.

Maybe in a year there will be flowers there. Not like Leviathan Blossoms — nice flowers, ones Cas would like. Maybe he’ll know they’re there, somehow, from his prison below.

Maybe they’ll make him happy.

Dean squeezes his eyes shut tight. The tears come anyway.

And he can’t help himself — isn’t sure if it hurts, or helps, or if Cas can even hear him at all. He prays:

_Cas? Cas, I’m sorry. I don’t know if you can even hear me, or — or if you want to. I just — it’s not fair. I am so fucking sorry._

_It should’ve been me._

This is so fucking useless; he’s so fucking useless. If Cas can hear him, he’s only making it worse.

_It was supposed to be over —_

He can’t stop.

_We were supposed to’ve won. Goddamnit, Cas, we_ won. _You were supposed to be here. We were supposed to be home —_

And his face is wet with tears. It spills out of him, uncontrolled, a flood.

_Nothing fucking matters now, Cas, and I can’t — I can’t stop thinking about you even though I know I’ve got a thousand other things to — it’s selfish and stupid and I’m just — I_ want you back. _I don’t care what you’d fucking do. I want you and I’ve lost you and I don’t know how to fucking —_

There’s a hand shaking his shoulder. “Dean!”

_— live without you, I — shit —_

A gentle slap across his face, then a harder one. “Dean. _Dean!”_

And Dean gasps, desperately, finally, awake.

#### (7.)

There’s a weight on his bed, hand tight on his shoulder in a way that makes him twist instinctively for the hilt of a knife. He stops, an instant later, when the figure leans closer. In the dark of his bedroom, he recognizes worried blue eyes.

“Dean, it’s me.”

Dean blinks. His face is wet, lungs fighting for air, and he’s in his room. His bedroom, and that’s —

“Cas?”

“I’m sorry for waking you.” Cas leans across him to pull the cord on the bedside light, collarbone bumping against Dean’s nose. “Are you all right?”

Illuminated suddenly, his face is warm and gold and rumpled with concern. No cruelty, no indifference, no sorrow.

He leans back so he can see Dean properly, taking in the twisted bedsheets, his t-shirt soaked in sweat.

“I’m —” Dean’s voice comes out as a croak. He coughs to clear it. “Fine.” He grasps at the scattering fragments of the dream. “Cas — what are you doing here?”

Cas’s face scrunches further. “You were — praying to me. In your sleep, apparently.”

The memory is organizing itself, slowly; Dean feels heat wash his cheeks. “Oh. I —”

Cas speaks over him. “I don’t understand.” In the glow of the lamp, it takes Dean a moment to realize that Cas is flushed, too; that is hair is sticking up and there’s color high in his cheeks. “I — you were saying you’d lost me, that I — that I might hurt you. Dean —”

“It was —”

“I know I’ve, I — but I wouldn’t, not ever —”

“He told me,” Dean manages, voice loud to cut over Cas’s. “Sam. About the — future Chuck showed him.”

Finally, Cas’s eyes fix on Dean’s face. Finally, he shuts his mouth.

“He said you were in the Ma’lak Box.”

There’s a long silence.

“I didn’t tell him we talked about that,” Cas says finally.

“Yeah,” says Dean. “Yeah, me either.” Then, because he’s still muzzy with sleep and he wants to and can’t quite remember why he shouldn’t, he reaches out to tangle his fingers in Cas’s shirt collar, up against the skin of his neck. He’s reassuringly solid. Warm. “I guess I — had a dream about it.”

Comprehension clears Cas’s face. “You were praying to me in the box.”

Dean gropes for meaning. There was more than that, he’s sure there was, but — “I guess.”

Cas is still staring at him. Dean feels more awake by the moment, and more self-conscious; he runs a hand through his hair. It’s soft, asymmetrically spiked. It probably looks stupid. That’s a dumb thing to worry about; Cas’s hair definitely looks stupid.

“I didn’t think,” he finds himself saying, “I didn’t think — we’d need it. Not for real.”

Cas’s expression softens.

He looks stupidly beautiful like this, with his stupid hair and his worried mouth and the creases around his eyes. He keeps looking at Dean and looking at Dean and he doesn’t look away.

After a long moment, he answers, “I did.”

“I thought,” says Dean. “Compared to me — you’d hold out for _centuries._ Figured by the time you needed it, some other poor schmuck would be shoving you in.”

Cas tilts his head.

It’s the same goddamn head tilt — the one Dean’s known for a decade and more. The one that comes with a blue-eyed squint and that terrible guileless curiosity that never fails to reach in and yank Dean’s guts out, put them all on display. _You don’t think you deserve to be saved._

“Why?”

_Why?_

What sort of an idiot question is that?

“Because you’re — you,” Dean manages. “I mean the Mark, it — it feeds on anger, right? And I’m — I mean we just established I’ve got a fucking barrel of anger issues over here, in case you forgot, and you’re — patience fucking personified, I mean you’ve put up with _me_ for years and years. Mark can’t be much worse than that. I guess.”

Cas’s brow is knit deep in thought. “Dean,” he says, “you are not a trial. Or a burden.”

Dean snorts. He can’t help it.

“I assure you,” says Cas. “You are not.”

He’s still looking at Dean too closely. Too understanding, and Dean can’t — he doesn’t —

He doesn’t have the reserves for this. Not now. In the morning, maybe — in the morning, he won’t shut Cas out.

He swallows. “Thanks for waking me.” Studies the bedspread. “I’m all right now, I think.”

If Cas recognizes the dismissal, if he minds it, it doesn’t show on his face. “Sleep well,” he says as he rises. He closes the door gently behind him.

Dean lies awake in bed for hours. He doesn’t sleep another wink.

#### (8.)

Sam is sitting at the kitchen table when Dean stumbles in, meditating over a nearly-full cup of coffee, dark circles under glazed eyes.

There’s more coffee in the pot. Dean pours himself some. “Hey.”

Sam blinks like he’s only just noticed him. “Hey.”

He looks like absolute shit. Kind of how Dean feels. He settles himself across from Sam. “How’d you sleep?”

That prompts a half-hearted chuckle, one of those flinches Sam tries to make out like a shrug.

Dean sips his coffee. It’s been on for a while — tastes stale. He closes his eyes and imagines the caffeine working into his bloodstream, clearing the fog around his brain.

“Yeah, me too,” he says finally. “Nightmares.”

Sam lifts his chin, questioning, and Dean figures he can give his brother this, just now: someone’s problems to think about outside his own. “Couldn’t stop thinking about Cas and the Mark — how it woulda gone down.”

Sam nods his understanding, looking back down at his cup. Then he asks, carefully, “You two had agreed he would take it?”

Dean takes another swallow. It’s really not good coffee. He grimaces. “Yeah. He thought it might not work on me, a second time, and besides — I figured he’d deal with it better than I would. Than I did.”

Sam turns his cup minutely in place, fingers framing the rim. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Dean, but — that doesn’t sound like you.”

“Well.” He doesn’t know what else to say to that.

And Sam’s looking up at him again, earnest, throat bobbing. “I’m not trying to pry, man, I’m really not, just — did something happen in Purgatory?”

Abruptly, Dean thinks he’s going to cry.

“He, uh.” His eyes are stinging, a hard lump in his throat. “He got captured. Thought I was gonna have to leave without him, or — or —”

_Or leave you to deal with Chuck alone._

It’s difficult to control his breathing. A moment later he stops trying, lets a great breath gust out of his lungs and wipes at his eyes with the heel of his hand. “Benny’s dead.”

Sam flinches.

“His own kind didn’t trust him. Ripped him apart. It was my fault he — I’m the one who sent him back there. And I kept thinking, if I brought Cas back there and — he died too —”

“Dean,” Sam’s saying, “it’s not your fault — I’m the one who left Benny in Purgatory. I’m the one you should be angry at.”

There it is again: anger. Abruptly, all the emotion drains away, and Dean just feels tired.

“Maybe I’m sick of being angry,” he says.

There’s something hopeful in Sam’s eyes. “Does that mean you and Cas are —”

He stops.

Or maybe he doesn’t, and Dean just stops hearing him, because Cas is in the doorway. His face is grave and kind and he’s not mad at Dean anymore, and Dean just wants to — crawl into that feeling and curl up in it. Bury his face in Cas’s trenchcoat and never let him go.

He doesn’t know what shows on his face.

Whatever it is, it’s got Sam clearing his throat. Shuffling quickly, mug in the sink. He has to pause at the door — Cas is blocking it — and Cas moves inside to let him past.

Then it’s just the two of them. Cas looking at Dean with the sort of bottomless fondness Dean can’t quite let himself believe, and he says, “It isn’t your fault, you know.”

Dean has to blink, twice. “What?”

“Your anger.” Cas sits across from him. “You told me you didn’t know where it comes from — that it’s always just been there. Dean, you were raised by an angry man.”

He’s speaking quickly, like it’s something he needs to get out. Dean blinks and shakes his head. “What? Cas — no. If you’re saying that makes it okay —”

“It’s _not_ okay.” Cas seems outright agitated. “Dean, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. It’s _not_ okay, it was never okay, but you had to live like it was. You couldn’t — you had to _survive,_ you had to forgive him and forgive him because you had nothing else — no one else. Every time you wished for a normal childhood or, or someone to care for you, or to stop hunting —”

There’s a roaring in Dean’s ears. “I didn’t.” He _didn’t,_ he never let himself think like that, not ever.

“Dean, _I know you.”_

Cas is talking with his hands, eyes bright with conviction, like he needs Dean to see something, something tremendously obvious, and Dean just — doesn’t get it.

“All that anger you felt — all the anger you _should_ have felt, all the anger I — I feel —”

He stops, suddenly. He’s looking at Dean like he’s given him all the pieces to put it together, laid out the most obvious trail he can possibly imagine, and still Dean can’t follow. It’s a mess, brightly colored fragments that don’t add up, because is Cas saying — _he’s_ angry at Dean’s dad?

That makes no sense. It has nothing to do with anything. Cas never even knew John Winchester.

Cas makes a frustrated sound in his throat. “I am not the paragon of patience you seem to think I am. Had I been there, when the Baozhu summoned your father —”

He stops again.

He looks suddenly, desperately lonely. Like he’s finally realized Dean can’t follow where he leads.

Dean would do anything — fucking anything — to get that look off of Cas’s face.

“Cas,” he tries, voice low, “what are you saying?”

But Cas looks down at his hands. “You had to bury that anger, Dean. You _had_ to. For yourself, and for Sam, and — I don’t blame you. Not a bit.”

That doesn’t mean anything. _Well, I blame me,_ Dean thinks, not for the first time, and then it occurs to him that this entire conversation is maybe not about him at all.

It’s too late. Cas is rising, a flimsy sort of smile on his face.

Dean can’t shake the feeling that he’s fucking up, again.

#### (9.)

There’s a broken window in the old power plant above the bunker. Local kids sneak in there sometimes — graffiti on the walls, empty beer cans, that sort of thing. Dean isn’t usually bothered about it; not like they can find their way past the bunker’s defenses. He’d rather they do that shit where he and Sam can keep an eye on them than some probably-haunted old grain silo outside of town.

Mostly the kids stay on the main level. The staircase to the upper floors collapsed long ago. But there’s an old iron ladder, if you know where to find it, that takes you all the way to the roof.

That’s where he finds Sam, sitting with his back to a smokestack. He’s staring out at the horizon and disturbing the pigeons, an enormous intruder in their domain.

“Hey,” Dean says.

“Hey.” Sam’s been crying; the skin below his eyes is puffy and red.

Dean sits next to him. “Wanna talk about it?”

Sam shrugs. He picks for a moment at a loose thread in his jeans, reminding Dean so forcefully of his teenage self that he has to close his eyes. When he opens them, Sam’s smiling a little, self-deprecating, down at his hands.

“In the future Chuck showed me,” he says. “Before everything went to shit — we were happy. You, me, Cas, Eileen — all of us in the bunker, having movie nights.”

He turns his hands so they’re palm up, curled into loose fists. Studies them for a moment. Then signs something — one index finger extending straight up, then the other, hands bobbing slightly in his lap.

“Popcorn,” he says. “That’s the sign for it, I think. Like the kernels bouncing, you know?”

His hands fall still again.

“And I keep thinking.” He laughs, breathy. “About — I mean — Eileen’s scared of herself now, right? She knows Chuck can use her, _puppet_ her, and she doesn’t know what’s real. But if I’d — if we’d trapped him — she wouldn’t have to wonder about that. She’d be free.”

He goes quiet. Dean watches a cloud scud across the horizon, twisting like it can’t quite decide what shape it wants to be.

“Does she,” he asks, and his voice comes out unexpectedly hoarse. “Does she know you want her to come back? I mean, does she _know,_ Sam?”

Sam’s quiet a moment. Then: “I kissed her.”

He looks tormented about it.

“I didn’t plan on it, I didn’t — want to make things harder than they already were, I just — she was talking about not knowing what’s real, and I. I had to show her that was.”

In Dean’s mind, Cas growls: _we are._

“Hang on,” he says, out loud.

Sam looks up at him.

“Shit.” Dean’s on his feet, with no memory of standing. “Sammy, I — fuck. I don’t wanna abandon you at your, your hour of need, I just — fuck. I gotta —”

But there’s a hint of amusement in his brother’s face. “I’m fine, Dean. Go.”

“Text her,” Dean tells him. “I mean, you must be allowed to do that, right? Don’t let her — don’t let her think you don’t —”

And Sam’s outright laughing at him, surprised and genuine, crinkles around his eyes. “ _Dean._ Get out of here. Took you long enough, Jesus.”

Dean has to spin around at the top of the ladder to point at him with an older-brother glare. “ _You_ don’t know anything. Whatever you think you do? You don’t. Got that?”

Sam’s laughter follows him all the way to the factory floor.

#### (10.)

He has to stop, just inside the bunker door, because his lungs are heaving like they think he’s going to die.

It’s some sort of a panic attack, he understands, objectively. Practically, he has to curl up with his head between his knees and his back to the door — breathe and keep breathing until he can finally convince his body there’s enough oxygen in his veins.

It’s fine. He’s _fine._ It’s only that —

There would’ve been a time, a while, before things got bad; they would’ve been happy —

Dean said _I don’t know what’s real_ and Cas said _we are_ —

What if they’d _known_ there was a ticking clock? What if Dean had been building that Ma’lak Box and Cas had been staring at that thing on his arm and they’d both understood exactly what it meant? That there was only so much time they’d have to be themselves, to be _with each other,_ and that when it ran out they’d want to know they hadn’t wasted it?

What if Cas was down in that box and he knew he’d have Dean praying to him, knew it because Dean had promised — not desperate rants but reassurances, messages of — of love —

And in Purgatory — what if Cas had died over there? Ripped to pieces like Benny?

What if Dean had left without him, and never known?

What if Cas had said _I heard your prayer_ and Dean had told him, _no, you didn’t — not all of it — not the part I couldn’t say —_

There’s always a ticking clock. There _always_ is, and Cas knows it, and tried to tell Dean — in his weird Cas way.

_Dean, I know you,_ Cas said.

Which means he knows Dean’s too much of a coward to ever say this shit. Which means he knows Dean’s fucking terrified, all the time, his whole goddamn life. Angry, sure, angry and _scared,_ just some little kid who’s been pretending for near on forty fucking years —

He’s not gonna be too scared for this.

“Castiel,” he says, out loud. He lifts his head from between his knees, eyes shut; tips it back against the door. Licks his lips. Tries to remember what he said, the very first time.

“I’m praying. Okay?”

Cas answers.

#### (11.)

Dean hears the stairs creak before he opens his eyes.

When he does, his vision’s bleary, Cas’s silhouette framed in a halo of light. Then he moves and Dean can see his face: the raised eyebrows, the careful half-smile.

“Hello, Dean.”

Dean has to shut his eyes again, just for an instant, to cope.

He’s not sure how to say this. How to explain: _I keep thinking and thinking about what I’d do if you’d taken the Mark, and I’m thinking maybe I should do it even though you didn’t, so —_

What? _Wanna bang?_ None of the usual openers work here. Cas isn’t a chick at a bar he can sound out with a certain kind of smile. Can’t ask Cas out on a date, either — what, dinner and a movie? They do that shit all the time.

“Cas,” he says. “I, um. Wanted to ask you something.”

There’s that goddamn head tilt again.

Dean doesn’t deserve this. He’s a shit friend, and he’d be a shit partner; he’s going to fuck things up. Push Cas away again, or get all needy at him, or —

He swallows. He’s got to fucking _try._ “What would,” he starts, and his voice cracks. “What would it take, for me to be someone you’d be with?”

The words are out.

He doesn’t let himself look away.

There’s something happening in Cas’s eyes, something Dean can’t read. And suddenly he doesn’t care what the answer is — he’ll do it. _Deal with your anger issues. Find a way to bring Jack back. Go to therapy —_

“Ask,” says Cas.

Dean blinks.

_Ask?_

He’s already asked. He’s _been_ asking. He doesn’t know what the fuck else he’s supposed to ask; it’s just a question of if Cas is even fucking interested, and that’s —

That’s the answer Dean’s been terrified of, all along.

Something splinters inside him and gives way.

It’s easy, suddenly, to look up at Cas. To lift his chin and square his shoulders and say:

“Do you want me?”

Cas reaches out to offer his hand.

Dean takes it, and Cas pulls him to his feet. For a moment they’re perfectly still. Face to face and nose to nose, too close, not close enough.

Then Cas kisses him.

His fingers curl around the back of Dean’s neck and his thumb slides to rest behind his earlobe, tilting his head so their lips meet. Then there are lips on Dean’s lips and stubble rasping against his stubble and he needs to focus on those details, to find something to hang onto, because it’s _Cas,_ and explosions are going off inside of him, rocking his ribcage and emptying his lungs —

And Cas steps back.

That’s how Dean learns that his hands are tangled in Cas’s trenchcoat, that his throat can make a horrifying little whimper at the loss. Cas looks at him and his face is grave but his eyes are smiling, and he says —

“Yes. Do you want me?”

Dean gapes.

Then he groans and yanks Cas in again.

#### (12.)

Sometime later — hours, or days, or months — Cas catches Dean running a thumb, again and again, over the unmarked skin of his right forearm.

“It’s all right,” he murmurs, into the curve of Dean’s neck. “It didn’t happen.”

Dean stills. “But it could.”

That’s their lives: nothing’s ever over. No threat past.

When he leans back, Cas is looking at him. “Yes.” There’s a smile in his eyes. “What do you intend to do about it?”

Dean rolls his eyes. Deliberately, he loops a hand through Cas’s tie.

And he answers.

**Author's Note:**

> On [tumblr](https://gravelghosts.tumblr.com/post/190342819944/the-way-you-didnt-go-6k-t-1509-coda).


End file.
